"We can't allow things that are inaccurate to stand." — The Word of Our Dan, February 19, 2008.

Saturday, October 04, 2014

Canada is big

Some rainy Saturday figgerin'.

This is the current 308-riding electoral map of Canada (urban insets excluded.)

The five ridings in the darkest shade of blue constitute more than 50% of Canada's landmass.

The next five, from Labrador in the east to Skeena–Bulkley Valley in the west, bring the total up to 69%.

Adding the next five, in palest blue, which include all ridings of more than 100,000 square kilometres of area, gets you to 79% of Canada.

On the other extreme, the 147 geographically smallest ridings, in urban and suburban areas, contain just over half the country's voting population, but only 0.1% of the area. That's roughly equal to the size of the current riding of Okanagan–Shushwap in the B.C. Interior, highlighted here in yellow.